Re: How to display an image in D3D / OGL / Glide?

Posted on 2016-12-22, 18:55

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

d3d? isnt ddraw enough? Good question. I'm not sure if you would be able to get a non-D3D surface on a VooDoo card, and if so, if that surface is lockable, or if you could otherwise blit 2D images to it. Might be possible. But leileilol raises an interesting point there... because if the …

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Re: How to display an image in D3D / OGL / Glide?

Posted on 2016-12-22, 15:50

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

leileilol wrote: The 256x256 splitting of the image has to be done too Oh yea, good point. I forgot that only 'modern' cards have the luxury of non-pow2 texturing 😀

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Re: Can Windows 95 (Version A) work on FreeDOS.

Posted on 2016-12-22, 10:43

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

No. Windows 9x has its own version of DOS 7.x built-in. It cannot run on 'regular' DOS like earlier versions of Windows did, but needs the special features built into DOS 7.x.

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Re: How to display an image in D3D / OGL / Glide?

Posted on 2016-12-22, 09:29

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I don't think there are tools for that. They'd need to be developed. Not too difficult (just two triangles covering the whole screen with a triangle covering it, taking care of the subpixel/subtexel positioning to make sure you get a proper 1:1 pixel:texel mapping), but someone has to do it. I have …

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Re: I've an idea: Let's get some game development going

Posted on 2016-12-22, 08:17

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

I haven't actually tried the versions from the Borland Museum, but I downloaded a copy of Borland C++3.1 back in the early 2000's to do some work on the Wolf3D codebase. Its IDE allows you to manage project files that contain a list of the source files and also has "build" and "build all" options …

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Re: 8-bit VGA BIOS Performance in 16-bit Systems

Posted on 2016-12-21, 08:07

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep that's the Bios of my 286 board... It's one of the later 286/16 with Headland chipset If you notice the landmark chrs/ms results there is no difference with shadowing options - and this is a text-mode benchmark as far as I can tell. Maybe the bios option doesn't do anything LOL It's possible …

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Re: PCI SB Card

Posted on 2016-12-20, 16:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

McDos wrote: Thanks for that. Can I set SoftMPU to run automatically during boot to DOS? Yes, I suppose you can just add it to your autoexec.bat.

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Re: PCI SB Card

Posted on 2016-12-20, 15:47

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I believe I also need an MPU-401 compatible intelligent MIDI interface for some games, so recommendations on this would be helpful too. Regular MPU-401 UART interfaces are easy to come by. Not sure if any intelligent ones exist for PCI. However, since you are using a 386+ machine, you can use …

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Re: ESS AudioDrive (ES1868) - a surprisingly good ISA sound card

Posted on 2016-12-20, 14:02

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

This card as space for add a real ymf262 opl3 chip, would it be just solder the missing ship or also add other components/move jumpers ? Anyone tried it? I would expect there to be a jumper (or some option in ESSCFG or such) to select whether to use the built-in OPL3 emulation, or the real chip. If …

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Re: AMD drops the mic

Posted on 2016-12-19, 22:40

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Streaming videogames is a popular high demand use though and i've seen friends upgrade to i7's (from i5's of the same generation ) just so the video encoder can behave with and play well with games for live >720p broadcasting. Yea, but not octocores? Besides, don't they offload that to the GPU …

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Re: AMD drops the mic

Posted on 2016-12-19, 22:32

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Err... with all due respect, you live in the same planet as the rest of us? Software keeps demanding faster CPUs ALL the time. Perhaps not all aplications, perhaps not the ones you use, but the trend is clear. I'm talking about mainstream computer usage. Sure, there's servers, workstations and that …

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Re: FPU 387 questions

Posted on 2016-12-19, 17:34

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I never really heard about the Weitek, was that faster? It's not compatible with x87, so it's difficult to make comparisons. They were supposed to be considerably faster, but you can't run the same code on both. You need specific applications for Weitek, and they're even more rare than x87 code in …

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Re: 8-bit VGA BIOS Performance in 16-bit Systems

Posted on 2016-12-19, 16:39

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remember that shadow ROM would greatly improve performance in textmode. But I wouldn't expect it to do much for games, if at all, since games generally don't use BIOS functions, other than setting a graphics mode on startup. Perhaps the exception is when games use the BIOS ROM font (although that …

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Re: FPU 387 questions

Posted on 2016-12-19, 16:00

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is it normal that if I disable the Weitek processor enable function from the bios, it says "none" coprocessor at bios post and in the dos programs they see it correctly? Probably. A Weitek coprocessor is an entirely different beast compared to a 387. The BIOS POST may just indicate the Weitek …

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Re: Trident TGUI9440 memory upgrades

Posted on 2016-12-19, 15:58

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

clueless1 wrote: Therefore, wouldn't replacing the 60ns socketed ram with 35ns allow the VBIOS to run all is ram at the rated 45ns? It has no way to tell what speed the RAM is. So no. As I said, if it even has configurable timings at all, they would be configured in the BIOS.

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Re: AMD drops the mic

Posted on 2016-12-19, 13:10

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

I want this to work out for AMD so that there's good competition again. Might wake the former trend of computing improvements up again. A better AMD means a better Intel. We all win. I never bought into that theory. Why not? Because the market is saturated with Intel. Most people (regardless of …

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Re: FPU 387 questions

Posted on 2016-12-19, 12:58

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think Falcon 3.0 ran without a FPU or at least FPU emulator (like q387 or Frankie). Yes, it has an FPU and non-FPU mode. If you don't have an FPU, certain features are just simplified or not available, and performance is lower. It was one of the first games to use an FPU. FPUs were …

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Re: Trident TGUI9440 memory upgrades

Posted on 2016-12-19, 12:41

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Has anyone tested whether faster add-on memory gives any type of measurable performance boost? Not unless there is a way to tell the card that you have faster memory. This generally requires you to patch and reflash the BIOS, but on old cards like this, I doubt that's even possible. The card will …

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Re: FPU 387 questions

Posted on 2016-12-19, 10:53

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Falcon 3.0 is a game that can use the FPU, and gives much better performance and enhanced graphics/simulation when an FPU is used. It made a massive difference for me at the time when I had a 386SX-16 with an IIT387.

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Re: Cd-rom with soundblaster 2 pro ct1600

Posted on 2016-12-18, 20:25

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Im having problems with my 486, i cant get my cd-rom to work with creative labs sound blaster 2 pro ide interface. Probably because the Sound Blaster Pro 2 doesn't have an IDE interface? :) It's a proprietary Panasonic/Matsushita interface. Just connect the CD-ROM to the IDE interface of your multi …

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